College football has truly become a week-to-week sport. Just ask USC. A week ago, the Trojans got field-stormed at Wisconsin after producing the lowest point total (7) for a Lincoln Riley-coached team. Saturday night, USC fans did the storming after their Trojans blitzed Ohio State for the most impressive win of Riley's tenure. Ohio State became the fourth consecutive AP top-2 team to lose to an unranked opponent, although new quarterback Luke Fahey was far from the problem. Top-ranked Miami was on the rails before rallying from a fourth-quarter deficit at North Carolina, and Indiana won a low-scoring overtime game for the second straight week, thanks to a 60-yard field goal from long-range specialist Paddy Mc Ateer and some overtime heroics from backup quarterback Grant Wilson.
The surest things at the top of the power rankings are UCLA and Utah, which avoided a letdown from the Houston win and got two defensive touchdowns in routing Cincinnati. Georgia returned from an open week to stomp Florida in Atlanta, generating four takeaways in the process, and Ole Miss, BYU and Texas Tech responded from tough losses with home wins, with the Red Raiders turning to new quarterback Thomas Castellanos against Arizona. Notre Dame emerged from its open week and struggled for a half against Navy before pulling away behind a remarkably balanced offense, and Texas rode its defense to a rare business-like win against Mississippi State.
While several SEC playoff contenders were off, Wake Forest asserted itself in the ACC race with another dominant performance, but SMU suffered a damaging loss to Syracuse. Ahead of the most-anticipated slate of the regular season, here's a look at the latest power rankings.
Source: ESPN General · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing